[Article: Portrait of a Hooker]
Title History
- Undisputed World Heavyweight title (five times between 1920-1931);
- AWA (Boston) World Heavyweight title;
- New York State Athletic Commission (N.Y.S.A.C.) World Heavyweight title (1932);
- Wrestling Association World Heavyweight title defeated Orville Brown (November 26, 1942);
- Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame;
- Tragos/Thesz Wrestling Hall of Fame;
- International Wrestling Institute & Museum Hall of Fame;
- Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame;
Career History
In The Beginning:
- Robert Friedrich started wrestling at the age of 14 at small carnivals and in farm towns throughout middle America.
- 1904: At the age of 14, Robert Friedich entered a wrestling ring in Madison, Wisconsin and won his first match!
- Robert Friedich became known as “Ed Lewis” as a disguise because his parents did not approve of wrestling.
- Ed Lewis was a true pioneer of the sport and one of its earliest and most dominant heavyweight champions.
- Ed Lewis helped establish professional wrestling at a time when it was somewhat unestablished.
Ed “Strangler” Lewis:
- July 4, 1916: Ed Lewis was involved in the longest wrestling match in history, wrestling Joe Stecher to a 5½ hour draw.
- Ed Lewis got his “Strangler” nickname, from a reporter who saw a resemblence between he and Evan “The Strangler” Lewis.
- Ed Lewis and boxing champion Jack Dempsey had a long “feud” throughout their simultaneous reigns (pushed by the press)
- ~~~Jack admitted the match would never happened because he knew that he didn’t stand a chance against a Wrestling Champion.
- Ed Lewis was probably the most accomplished submission wrestler in the sport during the early part of the 1900s.
- Ed Lewis was feared and respected both inside and outside of the ring for his extensive knowledge of submissions.
- Ed Lewis easily could (and sometimes did) injure and legitimately cripple any wrestler that crossed him if he felt like it.
- January 4, 1929: Gus Sonnenberg defeted Ed “Strangler” Lewis for the World’s Wrestling Heavyweight title.
- June 9, 1932: Ed “Strangler” Lewis defeated Dick Shikat for the NWA Heavyweight Wrestling title.
- 1937: Ed Lewis returned to the United States after a tour around the world and Lewis publically quit wrestling.
- Ed Lewis did not approve of the new style wrestling had adopted, but he kept wrestling dispite that announcement.
- November 26, 1942: Ed Lewis beat Orville Brown to win the Midwest Wrestling Association World Heavyweight title in Kansas City.
- 1947: Ed “Strangler” Lewis wrestled his last match, marking the end of a career that spanned four trecherous decades.
Ed “Strangler” Lewis:
- Ed “Strangler” Lewis (by his own records) wrestled in over 6,200 matches and lost only 33 of those contests.
- In retirement, Ed Lewis trained and occasionally managed his protege and N.W.A. World Champion, Lou Thesz.
- Ed “Strangler” Lewis also became the official good will ambassador for Sam Muchnik’s National Wrestling Alliance.
- Ed “Strangler” Lewis became a restaurant operator, a rancher and athletic director of a health club.
- Ed Lewis appeared in several films such as “Stranglehold” and “That Natzy Nuisance.”
- Ed Lewis served as a military instructor of hand-to-hand combat at Camp Grant in Rockford
- Ed Lewis lost his sight after a siege of trachoma early in his career but recovered and credited the recovery to prayer.
- Ed Lewis once again lost his eyesight during the last few years of his life.
- August 6, 1966: Ed “Strangler” Lewis died at the age of 76 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Muskogee, OK.
- ~~~Reports of his passing were in newspapers on August 8 which may account for this date being incorrectly used.